


The Space In-Between

by badjujuboo (miztrezboo)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Infidelity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-24
Updated: 2012-01-24
Packaged: 2017-10-30 01:40:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/326349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miztrezboo/pseuds/badjujuboo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><strong>Summary</strong>: Sometimes the end is the beginning, and the beginning is the end, it's the in-between that matters.<br/><strong>Disclaimer</strong>: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Space In-Between

**Author's Note:**

> In case it's not obvious, the numbers are out of order and moments in time both past/present. **Mamacita** is the beta devine, I fiddled with this MONTHS later so any further mistakes are my own. Purely posting because I'm PROCRASTINATING ON SOMETHING AND NEEEEEDDDDDYY. Mostly based on the song **Does He Love You?** by **Rilo Kiley**

**The Space In-between**

It all began during the war.

No. It all began a year and a bit in, at Christmas.

No, it really started that time in Third year when she expressed what words couldn't using the right hook her grandfather had taught her how to use over summer's spent in Blackpool.

Then again, it doesn't matter where it started, nor does it matter where it ends.

He loved her, and she loved him and he loved them and she just wants what should be hers.

This is a story about them, and her and him and how it all went wrong.

-4-

"I love spring here, there's just something in the air."

She snorted, dropping her cigarette into his drained glass of scotch. His hand painted patterns over the small of her back, cool fingertips on sleep warmed skin. He'd wrapped around her so tightly earlier, she'd thought it was another time completely. Back when they'd been different, when the world had been.

"I think it's all the sex we've had in here you can smell. Didn't you want to see the sights this time?"

His wedding ring glinted in the afternoon light where he grasped her arm. "Who says I'm not?"

-8-

He tugged at her skirt, this little thing with bright silver eyes, blond hair that curled innocently around an elfin face.

He tugged again and smiled, a gap where his two front teeth should have been, and offered her back the book she'd dropped when her feet moved faster than the clockwork of her mind.

He'd followed her, this little bit of a thing, catching up to where she stood behind a tree.

Hid really.

A name called with concern, a voice she had tried to forget.

And after four years, her heart burst, beating a staccato in her chest.

-3-

She dropped the letter into the bin. She refused to read them anymore – not that there were many, his daily had dropped to weekly and now she was lucky to see two a month.

It should have ended when he asked someone else to be his wife.

It should have ended when the war did.

It should have never begun.

She sat and glared at the bin, wishing she had a bloody smoke, anything to stop her fingers drumming over the tabletop. She should just Incendio the lot, be done with it all.

It couldn't hurt to read just one.

-5-

"Hermione? Granger is that you?"

This was where she should have kept walking.

"Stori?" Hermione said with a forced grin. Guilt had her fingertips gripping her wand and apparition on her mind.

"I knew it! Glad I didn't have to run to catch you, would have been a bit hard at the moment," the woman rubbed her hand affectionately over the prominent swell of her stomach.

Stupid. She had been stupid to come back here.

"It's been so long! Draco said you were in Paris, are you here long? Say you'll join us for dinner?"

Jealousy made her say yes.

-9-

In the quiet of her room, she turned the paper over in her hand. The black ink swirled, numbers turning into a blur and more so as her tears added to the mix.

_Wait for me._

_I'm sorry._

_Please._

_I promise._

_I need you._

_I miss you._

_Come back._

_Come back to me._

_Please._

It would be easy to say yes, to forget what had been done. The hurt that could be eased only to cause another more.

She wanted it. Really wanted it.

No.

No.

The paper fluttered in the breeze until its shape wasn't a shape at all.

-1-

The hours before the rest of the house rose were her favourite. It was quiet, and she could pretend they weren't stuck in the middle of what felt like unending darkness. He warmed her bed upstairs, dead to the world.

He'd told her he loved while their bodies had been pressed so close it was as if they'd melted into one. Whispers shared of a life they'd have "after" still curled inside her ear. An antiques shop in town, a little flat across from a park with a pond. He'd help her find her parents. She'd help him forget his.

-6-

"I _will_ leave her, I just, I have to _do_ this – he'll be my _son_ , don't you understand?"

"I thought I meant something to you, I thought-"

Malfoy could _kiss_ , she'd lost more fights than she'd ever care to admit once he discovered the secret to shutting her up.

"It's always been you but, this is my _family._ I can't walk out on responsibility. It's only one year, please."

He didn't see the woman behind him raise her hand to her lips and one around her stomach. He didn't see her tear filled stare as she quietly left.

Hermione did.

-2-

She wasn't exactly the picture of a perfect Pureblood Princess. Bedraggled mousy brown hair pulled into a knot on top of her head, one knee raised up on the chair covered by a shirt that Dean had worn the day before. She was always good for a bit of gossip, always ready with a smile.

"I'll never get married, it's second daughters rights you see, Daph's life is planned out and mine," She tapped the ash from her smoke, "mine is mine alone."

News of Daphne's death came late that afternoon.

Hermione knew the girl grieved for two lives lost.


End file.
